* Hello dear readers, I am Yuzu.
The story is nearing the end. There have been many people asking when it would end and the plan is to continue uploading for the next month.
The reason I am posting an announcement before the because there is something I would like to request, and that is to refrain from posting the upcoming plot to readers that have yet to catch up to the recent chapters on both comment sections and community forums.
My wish is for the ending that I have earnestly prepared to not be indiscreetly shared without the narration that comes before it.
Although I know a request like this is generally not followed, appealing like this is the only thing I can do…
I hope the following story will only be consumed by us ^-^…
Please abstain from giving spoilers. Thank you.
Thank you. I will write sincerely until the end.
From Yuzu.
[TLN: My plan is to finish (excluding the after story) by early November.]
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I am Yu Jitae.
This is the story of my imprisonment.
The door of the Dimensional Cruise slowly came to a close.
They were restraining themselves quite well but they ended up crying again with Yeorum’s kowtow. Things were delayed a little because of that.
Each passing second added more to my agony.
But what else could I do. All I could do was stand still.
At last, the Dimensional Cruise left through a fissure after sealing its door and flew for an interdimensional travel. Left alone, I gazed deeper into the fissure at the trail left behind by the ship.
That seaway will not close until their journey comes to an end. In other words, the fissure would be completely closed when their journey ends and will never open again.
And that would mean a complete farewell.
Feeling the gaze of the voyeuristic transcendent authority, I turned my feet.
The first thing entering my sight were the cigarette buds and the pack of cigarettes discarded by Yeorum before she entered the ship.
She had been smoking a lot. There was only one cigarette left inside the pack. Bending my back, I picked up the pack and all the cigarette buds and then carried my feet.
It was time to go home.
On the way back, I was alone.
I slowly walked on. The surroundings were very quiet.
Basking in a complete silence which was very rare, I felt slightly strange from realising the fact that there was no need to walk with haste.
My feet were always rushed, including the past and the 7th iteration.
However, there was no longer a need to be in a rush.
Mindlessly walking on, I reached the warp station after half a day. As I normally would, I teleported and headed to the floating island, ‘Haytling’.
Leaving the station, I walked outside and headed to the large academy city located in the middle of the island.
Academy City of Lair.
Going into Lair, I showed the ID card and headed to the residential district.
Dormitory Building 107 was located quite further inside the residential area. Walking longer than others, I reached the innermost building.
I climbed the stairs to Unit 301. Displayed outside the window was the small mountain behind Building 107.
This dormitory was like an apartment with corridors. When the corridor that I have always walked through appeared in front of my eyes, it finally gave me the feeling that I was back home.
And when I opened the door of Unit 301 and walked inside,
Welcoming me was a house that was now quiet with no signs of people.
I was taking off my boots when I found Kaeul’s shoes placed all around the entrance in a very disorganised state. By now, Kaeul must be lying down in her room with her shoes hurled everywhere.
After taking off my shoes, I walked into the house.
The house was a little small for six people including the protector to live in, and I occasionally considered whether we should move out or not.
But today, Unit 301 looked a lot bigger than before.
I headed to the living room. Next to the curtained glass door heading to the terrace was a large hologram TV, in front of which was a sofa. It was the sofa that the kids and I used to rest on as if it was the best place in the house.
Sitting there, I leaned on the backrest. The kids that used to come up and sit near me like cats were no longer here.
I raised my head and blankly stared at the ceiling.
Filling my head were several lines of thought.
Was it the fluffy memories of the past?
No.
Floating in my head was a sense of crisis.
I sent the kids back home. Such a day had finally arrived.
The day that I had been wishing for with all my heart was finally here and I thought a sense of accomplishment would be the one filling my head, and yet here I wasn’t feeling anything special. ‘So it’s today.’ That was how lacklustre my thoughts regarding it was.
However, I wasn’t saddened by it either.
Maybe I have been living for far too long to feel something like a dramatic sense of accomplishment. I have become too dull to stimulation due to my old age.
I took out the cigarette left behind by Yeorum, placed it between my lips and lit it on fire.
Some time in the past, I asked BM in detail how a ‘farewell’ would feel for a normal human, as well as how to overcome it if the separation was too painful.
In response, BM said that removing Taebaek’s belongings after losing the fake Jung Taebaek had successfully allowed him to erase the existence of his former son.
That same thing was what I was planning to do.
To be completely honest, I did have a lingering attachment. Even though everything was going according to plan, and even though I was now at the end of everything, my heart was still not at ease.
Those lingering emotions came to me as a sense of crisis all throughout the way back home, and was increasing even more in size after I returned to Unit 301. It wasn’t even funny how those kids were suddenly weighing on my heart now that I was finally going to kill myself.
Daily life had ended up making me act on a whim. And this was more whimsical than anything I had done before.
Even now, the necklace Gyeoul gave me was still flickering under the sunlight on my chest. However, my plan was to not look at the [Memory Crystal] exactly because of that sense of crisis.
I wondered if I should take it off, but decided not to.
There was still some time until the destined coming of the [Long Night]. Until then, I would not be able to die even if I wanted to.
Now, there was no need to stay at Lair and it should be fine to start cleaning the rooms up,
But before that was the cigarette.
Soon, the cigarette lost its flame after having everything scorched all the way to the filter tip. The refrigerator sounded especially noisier today and the lights looked all the more brighter.
Thus, I shut down the breaker.
The house was met with total darkness and a total silence. It was a lot better.
For now, I decided to rest for today but because I couldn’t go to sleep, I passed the night with open eyes.
Under the sofa and the scattering moonlight,
My night was very quiet.
.
.
.
Morning arrived.
I delivered commands regarding the Long Night to the two clones.
My role was to make the world self-sustain without me. For that, I had removed 40 percent of the anti-humanity superhumans, and applied a fierce restraint on the demons.
A month ago, the Association had already been cautioned by the Soothsayer. Their storages were opened – 1,200 types of anti-monster artifacts were supplied and each troop readied themselves for the battle.
Their movements were reported to other countries. The ones allied with the Association armed themselves to stand in line with them, and the neutral nations that did not trust the Association armed themselves for protection. Whatever the reason, they were in a better state to deal with monsters.
– Your will.
– I will be going off then sir!
After sending them off, I stood up from the sofa.
It was now time to empty the kids out of me,
So that they would not happen to become an obstacle.
I walked into Gyeoul’s room.
It happened on a certain night when Gyeoul came up asking for her own room. I didn’t like the fact that it had to be made at where the storeroom was, but Gyeoul was satisfied with her room regardless.
Opening the door, I walked inside. The first thing grabbing my attention was the huge fish tank. The fish tank had cost almost the same amount as a highrise building. Inside it were various tropical fish, seaweeds and crustaceans that Gyeoul picked up from all sorts of oceans.
[Shallows of the Abyss (S)]
The dark alternate dimension cracked open. I was going to use this as the rubbish bin for everything. However, there was no need to be helped by the white hands – it was my job to remove these.
Firstly, I drained the fish tank and sent everything down the sink. The water was very high quality for it to be discarded down the drain. It would clean up the sewage water for a while.
Next, I removed everything that was living inside it. They were all thrown into the Shallows of the Abyss and afterward, I chucked the fish tank as well.
I then cleaned the room. Gyeoul’s wardrobe, textbooks, laptop, the red yet blue-haired (coloured with a permanent marker) piggy-bank that was dissected recently and the diary of allowances were all chucked one by one.
That was when my eyes caught sight of a neatly tied synthetic fibre under the bed. Untying the knot, I realised it was an umbrella cover.
Ah, I remember this.
On a rainy day, I remembered going out together with Gyeoul and selling umbrellas so that she would not have to sit in debt. All the money that she had been diligently saving up was all for the memory crystal hanging on my neck…
The sound of the rain back then was quite good, was it not.
In any case, that was all in the past. I chucked the umbrella cover.
There were also several gummy jars. Those were the ones I had bought for her behind Bom’s back before she shed her skin.
It was strange. Even though all the other trash was discarded in time, these empty gummy jars were gathered at a corner of the drawer.
What was it about this that the kid liked so much?
Suddenly, I remembered doing shiritori with the child who was in severe pain from shedding her skin. Anaconda. Anaconda. Asteroid. Doonga Doonga. Antelope…
And gummies.
However, these were snacks for kids. She had already shed her skin, and would do so one more time to become a full-fledged adult.
At that point, she would no longer look for gummies.
…When she gets older…
That made me a little curious.
How would Gyeoul look when she gets older?
She would be as tall as Bom and Yeorum, and would by then be an adult that can speak properly. She would gain a hobby that I do not know, and will meet someone I do not know to enjoy her new life.
At that point, I would be forgotten and she would enjoy her life.
I decided not to indulge in that thought too much.
Because now, we were strangers.
Apart from the gummy jars, the presents were nowhere in sight. She appeared to have taken them with her, including the cap which she wears quite often and the bracelet I gave…
After returning to my room, I found the music box that Gyeoul had given me as a present before.
It sounded quite nice.
Picking it up, I threw it into the rubbish bin.
It took half a day to completely clean up Gyeoul’s room.
Like that, I slowly emptied myself of Gyeoul.
.
.
.
Kaeul’s room was messy.
Plushies, chocolate packs, packets of snacks and clothes were all everywhere.
Kaeul out of the hatchlings was the one that was the most similar to human girls of her age. She bought clothes, wallets, rings and various shoes. For shoes alone, she already had more than ten of them.
In fact, at the start of the 7th iteration, I had a little bit of an obsessive compulsive disorder. I used to feel irritated by anything tangling my feet and thus had a habit of cleaning them up.
So back when it was early into our life together, I planned for a big cleaning day. What did Kaeul say back then?
Who goes into a girl’s room like that, was it?
Her room used to be a messy pigsty.
But now it was different. She had a new wallpaper, a pretty lamp and the full-length mirror at the side was both big and fancy.
It was now a beautiful pigsty.
I opened the wardrobe. Inside were the pyjamas she loved, a fluffy and flabby one-piece dress, a boxy top and a sweater, a coat, a turtleneck, a short skirt she never wore after buying and a similar dress and…
Beneath all that was an unfamiliar piece of clothing. What is this – thinking that, I raised it up and inspected it to realise something.
It was round and chubby, and was clearly for Chirpy the baby chicken.
That woolly piece of clothing that was neatly folded up was too small. Kaeul must have been quite flustered, after buying it and then realising that the chicken was growing rapidly in size.
The funny thing was that there were four pieces of clothes that were assumed to be for the baby chicken, with one for each season.
However, I had never seen the baby chicken wear clothes before.
In other words, it must have gone like this. ‘Let’s make Chirpy wear this in Spring’ – thinking that, she bought clothes but the chicken was too big to wear it that Spring, and the same process seemed to have repeated itself three more times.
It was just what Yu Kaeul would do, and made me float an empty smile.
The organism under protection always grew up very fast. The kid who used to follow from a single macaron, had gone through a military life and became a guardian deity. Looking back, all those harsh times and her improvement through them had happened at the blink of an eye.
Wait, what’s this.
From a different drawer, I found a rectangular packet. It was too crude for it to stay with other cosmetics and looked exactly like a pack of cigarettes…
There was also something like a plastic bag sticking out from the top of the pack.
I had seen something similar a long time ago.
It was a very very long time ago.
Don’t tell me…